VIDEONALE.scope

The experimental film and video art series VIDEONALE.scope has complemented the Videonale Bonn programme since 2013. In addition to the biennial VIDEONALE – Festival for Video and Time-Based Arts at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, which presents the latest positions from the field of moving images, VIDEONALE.scope expands the event spectrum by a cinema format with a focus on thematically conceived programmes that bring young and historical positions into dialogue. The format thus ties in with the 1st Videonale (1984), which already presented film and video as part of the festival program at the time.

VIDEONALE.scope #9 | Madness and Civilization
Filmforum im Museum Ludwig, Filmhaus Köln, Lichtspiele Kalk, Cologne
December 15-18, 2021

VIDEONALE.scope#9 is curated by Viktor Neumann.

This December VIDEONALE.scope #9 dedicates four evenings to historical and contemporary moving image works that examine the relation between madness and civilization and the normative constructions of “illness” and “health.”

The program borrows its title from Michel Foucault’s eponymous study Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. In his first major theoretical work from 1961, the French philosopher argues against the diagnosis of mental illnesses as codified medical facts, instead shedding light on how the concept of madness has changed over the course of history and on the societal and political concepts that underpin these constructions. The text is regarded as one of the pivotal theories for the demands of the anti-psychiatry movement that, since the 1950s, has criticized institutional psychiatry and its treatment methods, investigated the role of society towards the processes of becoming insane, and placed emphasis on neuronal differences as other, but no less significant forms of cognition. While the movement was able to assert many of its demands, the alleged oppositions between “healthy/productive” and “ill/unproductive” continue to function as central categories for systemic oppression, far beyond the medical realm. At the latest since the efforts of the anti-psychiatry and the disability rights movements, numerous positions in the field of moving image have emerged that contribute to producing emancipatory acts and that understand vulnerability and empowerment as interrelated.

VIDEONALE.scope #9 brings together experimental films, video works and conversations with artists and filmmakers that aesthetically and discursively approach the realm of “madness and civilization” from different perspectives.

With works by Panteha Abareshi, Mel Baggs, Stan Brakhage, Tony Cokes, Thirza Cuthand, Heinz Emigholz, Luke Fowler, Coco Fusco, Barbara Hammer, William E. Jones, Carolyn Lazard, Karin Michalski & Ann Cvetkovich, Rory Pilgrim, Jacolby Satterwhite, P. Staff, Imogen Stidworthy and Martine Syms.

VIDEONALE.scope is funded by: